Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Seven Things to do after Installing Bodhi Linux

So you've taken the plunge and opted to install Bodhi Linux. Perhaps you read a recent review or one of the screen shots in our gallery caught your eye. Either way you've got a newly installed system and you might be wondering what exactly to do next. The following are seven things that are a good idea to do on a cleanly installed Bodhi system.

1.) Check for Updates
Bodhi Linux has a semi-rolling release model. By this we mean you can easily upgrade from one minor version to the next and we continue to push out package updates in between releases. To update your Bodhi install open LXTerminal from your applications menu and run:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Enter your password, press enter and then let APT work it's magic.

2.) Read the Quick Start

There are a lot of hard working people on the Bodhi team that try to bring you the best documentation possible. At the same time we know there is a lot of information to absorb when first using Bodhi. Because of this we have assembled everything you need to know to get started right off the bat in one handy guide.It is well worth taking a short while to look it over.

3.) Install Some Software

One of the things you will note about Bodhi Linux is that we have a minimal application set that gets installed by default. Fear not though - there are two powerful, graphical tools at your disposal for installing more software on Bodhi.

The first is our Application Center. Navigating to this page in the default Midori browser allows you to easily find and install an application for almost every task you can think of with just a few clicks. If you are not certain what software you might need we have assembled to application "packages" that each contain a group of software for making your computer fully functional. Our "Nikhila Application Set" is fully loaded for most any task you can think of and the "Pratibha Application Set" provides a full range of lighter applications that should run quickly even on older computers.

Feel free to take some time to look at all the other software that is listed on the page as well. Maybe even install a game or two.

Can't find what you are looking for on our software page? Don't worry - you can also find Synaptic package manager in your menu which will let you find and install anything in the Bodhi, GetDeb or Ubuntu repositories.

4.) Install Multi-Media Codecs

If you use VLC for your media needs or you only use open source codecs you can skip this step. However if you wish to use a music player such as Clementine or a video player such as mPlayer then you will need to install system wide codecs to support different types of media. You can install media codecs to support almost every media type that exists here. If you also plan to use your Bodhi machine for DVD playback you will also need to install the DVD library from here.

5.) Customize your Appearance

While Bodhi comes with a fairly good range of themes installed by default there are plenty more to be found! You can find over thirty different themes to choose from here.Find the one that best fits you taste/personality. If you are looking for even more customization you can find twenty different icon themes to easily install on your Bodhi system here.

6.) Get to Know Your Profiles

Not to be confused with your "theme", your selection of profile in the Enlightenment desktop determines how your desktop is laid out. When you first installed Bodhi you where asked what type of layout you wanted to have - this was the profile selection. If you come to discover after installing that you don't like your first profile choice (or simply want to try the others), you can easily change it without a reinstall. You can learn how to change profiles and many other things they can do here.

27 comments:

Bodhi is great, but I could not add users unless I went to the command line. Cumbersome at best, a modern distro needs a GUI option to perform such basic tasks. I can hack around and do it, but my 84 yr old dad is not going to hunt down the commands to go to the command line for basic tasks. For now he used Mint 11. Thanks for a great distro, close a few loopholes like this and It will be nearly perfect.

Roszyk - You are welcome to install whatever GUI tools you want on Bodhi - You have the whole Ubuntu repository at your finger tips.

I've been using Linux for over 4 years now and I have NEVER had a need to add a user after installing the base system. I am sure many others are the same. Because of this we will not clutter the base system with such applications.

Bodhi is minimalisitic by design. Random GUI software not included by default is not a "loop hole"

One user I always add (and advise others to add) is a non administrator user for security reasons. Also, any family that wants separate user logins would want to add users. If there is a package I can install that allows one to add users with a GUI, let me know.

Don't get me wrong, I really like what Bohdi is doing. It is without a doubt the best Enlightenment based distro around. My 5 yr old Toshiba laptop looks beautiful, and runs quite fast with Bodhi. Thanks and keep up the great work you are doing with Bodhi.

Really useful for new comers to Bodhi, and can also be used as a reply by direct link to some kind of comments (due to lack of information) users use to post under Bodhi review articles published in the net.

Going by Jeff's assertions, I too, must be in the minority; I agree with Roszyk about needing to add a user or two. When setting up a newbie, I'll always give myself access with a root account, and I'll always restrict the availability of 'hazardous' commands availability to the sudo user. Personally, I use Fedora and Slax, and I like the way Fedora manages users.

Obviously there are exceptions to every rule. But remember folks - Bodhi is minimal by design. If we started adding a GUI app for every task right of the bat we would become as bloated as Ultimate Edition.

Jeff, I wonder if you could come up with a utilities, metapackage which could contain some of the more widely used, especially GUI type packages. Such as a calculator, a users interface, maybe file sharing, a pdf viewer and maybe some other utilities that are being requested by your users? Probably would be good to concentrate on utilities that would be helpful to linux newbies or those that don't like mucking around in the OS. Like those packages which open a file browser when you insert a usb drive, or open the correct media player when you insert an audio cd, or a DVD.

I love the speed of Bodhi. I wanted to see how quick it was fully bloated. I finally found and installed most of the packages to accomplish this. I can report to you that it is still noticeably faster than the bloated Zorin OS 5 I also use(mainly to convert windows users).

Sorry Jeff, You know I've looked through the Nikhila Package many times and just now noticed the -systemtools attached to filelight. You seem to have it all covered except a user gui. But maybe its in there too.

Hi Jeff, I just tested the Live Cd and I really love this distro! However, when I tried to install it on hdd (on an Acer Aspire A-751h), I'm stuck at the last step: I added name, computer name, username and password (and everything is reported ok by the green validation sign, and the message is "Ready when you are ready") but... cannot go further!! Only the "back" button is active, not the "forward" button. Maybe I missed something (I come from the Windows environement). Any help please? Thanks!

Bodhi Linux 1.2.1 is freshly installed on my second desktop rig, a vintage HP Pavilion running with 500MHz processor & 512MB RAM. Very speedy on this old machine and elegant looking. Thanks for the review. It should help me enhance my Bodhi Linux experience.

Install 1.2.1 to HP Pavilion ; AMD Turion X2 64 bit. E desktop is beautiful in appearance. Will not correctly install themes without crashing. Shows modules (forecasts) available to load, but when click load says no to found in module directory.

Bodhi is looking good and running fast. My biggest problem was getting HP 2050 printer to print. Could you please add printer support. I would bet 95% all users use a printer. I was ready to reinstall mint until after 1 hour I got my printer working.

I was wondering why I cannot mount any of my HDD partitions (Windows 7 format) using Navigate of Bodhi 2.4.0 in Live CD? I never had this problem with Mint, Puppy, or any other distro in Live CD before.

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